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<table width="100%" summary="page for politicalKnowledge"><tr><td>politicalKnowledge</td><td style="text-align: right;">R Documentation</td></tr></table>

<h2> 
Political knowledge in the US and Europe 
</h2>

<h3>Description</h3>

<p>Data from McChesney and Nichols (2010) 
on domestic and international knowledge 
in Denmark, Finland, the UK and the US 
among college graduates, people with 
some college, and roughly 12th grade only.  
</p>


<h3>Usage</h3>

<pre>
data(politicalKnowledge)
</pre>


<h3>Format</h3>

<p>A <code>data.frame</code> containing 12 columns and 4 rows.
</p>

<dl>
<dt>country</dt><dd>
<p>a character vector of Denmark, Finland, UK, and 
US, being the four countries compared in this data set.  
</p>
</dd>
<dt>DomesticKnowledge.hs, DomesticKnowledge.sc, 
DomesticKnowledge.c</dt><dd>
<p>percent correct answers to calibrated questions
regarding knowledge of prominent items in domestic
news in a survey of residents of the four 
countries among college graduates (ending 
&quot;<code>.c</code>&quot;), some college (&quot;<code>.sc</code>&quot;) and
high school (&quot;<code>.hs</code>&quot;).  Source:  McChesney 
and Nichols (2010, chapter 1, chart 8).  
</p>
</dd>
<dt>InternationalKnowledge.hs, 
InternationalKnowledge.sc, 
InternationalKnowledge.c</dt><dd>
<p>percent correct answers to calibrated 
questions regarding knowledge of 
prominent items in international news 
in a survey of residents of the four 
countries by education level as for 
<code>DomesticKnowledge</code>.  Source:  
McChesney and Nichols (2010, chapter 1, 
chart 7).  
</p>
</dd>
<dt>PoliticalKnowledge.hs, 
PoliticalKnowledge.sc, 
PoliticalKnowledge.c</dt><dd>
<p>average of domestic and international 
knowledge
</p>
</dd>
<dt>PublicMediaPerCapita</dt><dd>
<p>Per capital spending on public media in 2007 
in US dollars from McChesney and Nichols (2010, 
chapter 4, chart 1)
</p>
</dd>
<dt>PublicMediaRel2US</dt><dd>
<p>Spending on public media relative to the US, being 
<code>PublicMediaPerCapita / PublicMediaPerCapita[4]</code>.  
</p>
</dd>
</dl>



<h3>Author(s)</h3>

<p>Spencer Graves</p>


<h3>Source</h3>

<p>Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols (2010) <em>The Death and 
Life of American Journalism</em> (Nation Books)
</p>


<h3>Examples</h3>

<pre>
##
## 1. Combine first 2 rows 
##
data(politicalKnowledge)
pk &lt;- politicalKnowledge[-1,]
pk[1, -1] &lt;- ((politicalKnowledge[1, -1] + 
                 politicalKnowledge[2, -1])/2)
pk[1, 'country'] &lt;- 'DK-FI'

##
## 2.  plot
##
xlim &lt;- range(pk[, 'PublicMediaPerCapita'])
ylim &lt;- 100*range(pk[2:7])
text.cex &lt;- 2

# to label the lines 
(US.UK &lt;- (pk[2, -1]+pk[3, -1])/2)

#png('Knowledge v. public media.png')
op &lt;- par(mar=c(5, 7, 4, 2)+.1)
plot(c(0, 110), 100*ylim, type='n', axes=FALSE,
     xlab='public media $ per capita',
     ylab='Political Knowledge\n(% of standard questions)',
     cex.lab=2)
axis(1, cex.axis=2)
axis(2, las=2, cex.axis=2)
with(pk, text(PublicMediaPerCapita, 100*PoliticalKnowledge.hs,
              country, cex=text.cex, xpd=NA, 
              col=c('forestgreen', 'orange', 'red')))
with(pk, text(PublicMediaPerCapita, 100*PoliticalKnowledge.sc,
              country, cex=text.cex, xpd=NA, 
              col=c('forestgreen', 'orange', 'red')))
with(pk, text(PublicMediaPerCapita, 100*PoliticalKnowledge.c,
              country, cex=text.cex, xpd=NA, 
              col=c('forestgreen', 'orange', 'red')))
with(pk, lines(PublicMediaPerCapita, 100*PoliticalKnowledge.hs,
               type='b', pch=' '))
with(pk, lines(PublicMediaPerCapita, 100*PoliticalKnowledge.sc,
               type='b', pch=' '))
with(pk, lines(PublicMediaPerCapita, 100*PoliticalKnowledge.c,
               type='b', pch=' '))
with(US.UK, text(PublicMediaPerCapita, 100*PoliticalKnowledge.hs,
                 'High School\nor less', srt=37, cex=1.5))
with(US.UK, text(PublicMediaPerCapita, 100*PoliticalKnowledge.sc,
                 'some\ncollege', srt=10.5, cex=1.5))
with(US.UK, text(PublicMediaPerCapita, 100*PoliticalKnowledge.c,
                 "Bachelor's\nor more", srt=-1, cex=1.5))

par(op)
#dev.off()

##
## redo for Wikimedia commons
## without English axis labels 
## to facilitate multilingual use 
##
#svg('Knowledge v. public media.svg')
op &lt;- par(mar=c(3,3,2,2)+.1)
plot(c(0, 110), 100*ylim, type='n', axes=FALSE,
     xlab='', ylab='', cex.lab=2)
axis(1, cex.axis=2)
axis(2, las=2, cex.axis=2)
with(pk, text(PublicMediaPerCapita, 100*PoliticalKnowledge.hs,
              country, cex=text.cex, xpd=NA, 
              col=c('forestgreen', 'orange', 'red')))
with(pk, text(PublicMediaPerCapita, 100*PoliticalKnowledge.sc,
              country, cex=text.cex, xpd=NA, 
              col=c('forestgreen', 'orange', 'red')))
with(pk, text(PublicMediaPerCapita, 100*PoliticalKnowledge.c,
              country, cex=text.cex, xpd=NA, 
              col=c('forestgreen', 'orange', 'red')))
with(pk, lines(PublicMediaPerCapita, 100*PoliticalKnowledge.hs,
               type='b', pch=' '))
with(pk, lines(PublicMediaPerCapita, 100*PoliticalKnowledge.sc,
               type='b', pch=' '))
with(pk, lines(PublicMediaPerCapita, 100*PoliticalKnowledge.c,
               type='b', pch=' '))
par(op)
#dev.off()

</pre>


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